Compromise Reached On Poll Hours

Compromise Is Reached On Poll Hours For Primary

March 05, 1992|By MIKE SWIFT; Courant Staff Writer

Connecticut residents will be able to vote from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the March 24 presidential primary, under a bill adopted Wednesday by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.

The compromise, adopted by wide margins and with little debate in the House and Senate, ended an impasse between the two chambers on the first substantive piece of legislation this session.

The disagreement was over whether to cut back voting hours during the primary to noon to 8 p.m., from the current 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., to save money for cities and towns. Local registrars of voters had asked the legislature for help after lawmakers last year cut $925,000 in aid to the towns for election expenses.

Instead, the bill adopted Wednesday will allow local registrars to cancel the state-mandated canvass of the voter list in 1992. Cities and towns can use money budgeted for the canvass to defray the cost of keeping the polls open for 14 hours during the primary, said Sen. Marie A. Herbst, D-Vernon, a chairwoman of the government administration and elections committee.

"There really was no other way at this point to tap a source of dollars," Herbst told fellow Senate Democrats at a caucus before Wednesday's vote.

It was not an ideal solution, Herbst admitted: "I'm not going to jump for joy."

The House voted 129-15 for the bill. In the Senate, Sen. Kevin B. Sullivan, D-West Hartford, was the only member to vote against the plan.

Sullivan said he was worried that allowing registrars to skip the canvass for a year could lead to inaccuracies in the voter list and charges of fraud. "So you have to be dead for two years before you can stop voting, instead of one year?" he asked in the caucus.

The Office of Legislative Research said that the savings for towns that omit a canvass would vary widely by population -- about $31,000 for Hartford, about $500 for Ashford.

Rep. William A. Kiner, D-Enfield, a chairman of the elections committee, said the savings for most towns would be about equal to the cost of keeping the polls open from 6 a.m. to noon.

Last week, it appeared that both chambers would adopt a bill that would maintain the current voting hours in exchange for allowing towns cost-cutting measures, such as reducing the number of election officials required to be at the site. Weicker had threatened to veto any bill that cut voting hours.

The House accepted the proposal, but the Senate rejected it.

After signing the latest bill into law late Wednesday afternoon, Weicker praised lawmakers for maintaining full voting hours and allowing people "every opportunity to participate in the electoral process.